1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic musical instrument of the type which stores data obtained by sampling a tone and generates a tone based on the stored data.
2. Prior Art
There has been proposed an electronic musical instrument of the sampling type which stores data obtained by sampling a tone of an acoustic musical instrument into an associated memory and produces a tone in accordance with the stored sampled data. Such an electronic musical instrument, wherein the stored sampled data serves as a tone source, is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 54-161313. This conventional electronic musical instrument operates in one of two modes, namely, a part sampling mode and a full sampling mode. A memory provided in the electronic musical instrument is divided, in the part sampling mode, into a plurality of storage areas which are assigned to key zones of the keyboard, respectively. Each of the storage areas stores data representative of a tone in response to a depression of a key in a corresponding one of the key zones, whereby a plurality of groups of data representative respectively of different tones can be stored in the memory. When a key on the keyboard is depressed, the data in the area corresponding to the key zone of the depressed key are read out at a rate determined by the corresponding key zone to form a tone.
With the conventional electronic musical instrument, although tones of different waveshapes can be generated, the generation of each tone is effected based only on the tone data stored in the corresponding storage area in the part sampling mode. Thus, each tone generated by this conventional electronic musical instrument is liable to be monotonous.
When the conventional electronic musical instrument operates in the full sampling mode, the plurality of storage areas are used as a single storage area for storing data representative of a tone. In this case, the generation of tone is performed based only on the tone data stored in the full sampling mode. Thus, although tones of different pitches can be generated in this mode, their wave shapes are identical to each other, so that the tones are liable to be monotonous.